A four-year-old girl whose face was blown off during a US drone strike in Afghanistan was kidnapped by American troops and hidden by an international organization, her family says.

The child, named Aisha Rashid, was travelling with her parents, a
sibling and several other relatives from Kabul to their home in
the village of Gamber in Kunar province on a hot September day,
when the drone exploded,
Expressen.se reported. An uncle, Meya Jan, is at home on his
farm in that village when he receives a phone call about the
strike from the neighboring village. He and others rush to the
strike.

Suddenly they hear a voice. "Water, water..."

It is Aisha. She is missing a hand, her leg is bleeding, and
there is nothing left of her eyes or nose.

Older relatives rush her to the hospital in Asadabad, but doctors
there can do nothing. She is transported by ambulance to a
hospital in Jalalabad, where surgeons do what they can to patch
her face, but her case is too difficult for them. Hospital staff
contact the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA), who arranges for her to be sent by medical helicopter to
Kabul four days later.

The
incident occurred on September 7, 2013, when NATO drones
destroyed a pickup truck with civilians inside after its driver
agreed to give a lift to Taliban insurgents, provincial governor
Shuja ul Mulk Jalala said at the time. A report listed that four
women, four children, and four men had been killed in the strike.
The remaining four fatalities were said to be Taliban militants.
NATO command acknowledged that the strike took place, but stated
that the operation killed only militants – not civilians.

Once in the Kabul hospital, Aisha is visited by Afghan President
Hamid Karzai. “She had lost the whole family, the entire
family, 14 of them, in the bombing in Kunar. And that day . . .
[note: there is a 39-second pause as Karzai struggles with his
emotions] . . . that day, I wished she were dead, so she could be
buried with her parents and brothers and sisters,” he said,
recalling the visit in an interview with the
Washington Post five months later.

“She is walking now, she is in America. We arranged for her
to be taken to America. She’s there now,” Karzai said in the
March phone interview.

But Jan and Aisha’s other uncle, Hasrat Gul, did not give
permission for the only surviving member of the Rashid family to
be taken to the US, nor were they allowed to go with her. And
they were not given any news of their niece.

"We think she is in the US, that's what they told us, but we
have no contact and we don't know if she is still in Bagram or if
she's been flown out," Gul told Expressen’s Av Terese
Cristiansson in early October. They said they believed the US
military was trying to hide her because drone strikes are such a
sensitive subject.The two uncles give the reporter power of
attorney to find Aisha.

And so Cristiansson embarks on a journey to find Aisha that she
describes as “Kafkaesque.”

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took over the
case days after Karzai visited Aisha. Cristiansson emails the
ISAF, but they have turned Aisha’s case over to a relief
organization named Solace, which helps Afghan children with war
injuries to receive international treatment. Solace's strategy is
to pay for foreign treatment and then place the children with
foster families until they can be flown back to their own
country. The reporter contacts them in November, and they
initially seem willing to work with her on following the case for
an article and documentary. But when Cristiansson says she wants
to visit Aisha at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
outside Washington, DC (where Solace says the girl is located),
the group becomes unresponsive.

In the meantime, the family had been receiving no communications.
"We were informed that she didn't have any family," says
Patsy Wilson, one of the founders of Solace told Cristiansson.
The press office at Walter Reed said the family should ask local
representatives at the base in Kunar about Aisha's condition.

The family, with no updates, believes the US military have taken
Aisha. “They probably don't want her to become a poster girl
for drone repercussions," they said. They even start
doubting whether she is alive.

Karzai spoke to Aisha at the end of February, days before his
Post interview. “I called the family with whom she was. She’s
still blind; she will not be a normal girl again. They’re trying
to conduct plastic surgery on her,” he said. “The lady
that looks after her, an Afghan lady, says she keeps asking about
her younger brother who was 3 years old when they were
killed.”

Jan and Gul did not speak to their niece until March.

“She cried and wondered where we are and how everyone in the
village is. She spoke to my son and said that 'as soon as I'm
strong I'm coming home to the village’,” Jan said to
Cristiansson at the time. “She said she has learnt her
ABC.”

But the two uncles say they do not want Aisha in the United
States. “We were against the US taking her. They killed our
entire family and now they have her,” they said. “Even
Germany and France said they could help her, but the US wanted
her so that the case didn't become too big in other countries. We
don't understand why none of us got to go with her either, that
she had to travel alone.”

Gul told Cristiansson they have been compensated $2,000 per
victim who died in the drone strike. "They want to give us
money, but we don't want America's money. We have said that the
only apology we can accept is what it says in the Koran: 100
camels,” he said. They also want the person responsible for
killing their family brought to justice, and for Aisha to return
to them. They think she realizes she cannot live in a country
that killed her mother, father and little brother.